


This Is How An Angel Cries

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Archangels, Gen, Godstiel: Cas as God, Time Travel, Transformation, Vessels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:15:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first act of a Christian God is to create an archangel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How An Angel Cries

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Theodicy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/372584) by [manic_intent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent). 



> Note: [Just to clarify](http://www.macroevolution.net/root-word-dictionary-ijk.html#.USknDRnfa2y), Kainos is the Greek root word for new, fresh, and the letter K in a Greek root is often replaced by the letter C in modern English words derived from that root. 
> 
> ETA: Cas made a promise and this is how Godstiel fulfills it. Not canon-compliant past 6.22.

He placed inside you the light of transportation and the color of language and the noise of remedy. He shaped your soul into grace and your flesh into a coat and your mind into the universe. He gave you the history of energy and the determination of celestial intent and the connection to a heavenly host he then decimated. He made you His; there is no comparison that fits, no simile that can tell even a fraction of the story, and no metaphor that can get any detail right. Jimmy Novak once compared being ridden by an angel to being chained to a comet, and you once tried to tell Amelia, shaking in the backseat of a car and hoping her eyes didn't turn black again, voice hoarse and words fumbling, that it was like being submerged into an ocean.     
  
And yet here you stand, seventy-nine yards away in human flesh and too weak eyes, and here you stay, observing a woman who you once called mommy.   
  
Humanity leaves a stain, but God doesn't want to hear that.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
The pews are lined like soldiers in formation. Your dress itches. It's blue, and matches your eyes, and looks lovely with your hair. Someone calls you a pretty princess but at four that sounds like a promise to Disneyland. The sermon lasts too long and uses too many quotes and meanders in the middle. In the ninth row a woman commits a sin, according to the Church. In the twelfth, a man commits a sin, according to God. (Both of them. Not all of them.) The carpet is brown and the plastic plant leaves droop. It is August. You wiggle in your seat. Jimmy cups the back of your neck and stills your flesh.  
  
You stand in the row and look down at yourself. You lean over and blow a gentle breath across your four-year-old face. It smells like morning, like running through sprinklers and pancakes in funny shapes. You smile, a tooth beginning to loosen in your mouth, bright and happy at the scent. You don't remember this memory. You remember everything.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
God does not call. He is there, and he requires you, and you are there.  
  
_Cainel_ , He doesn't say. It's not English and God is not He.  
  
_Yes._  
  
_Find Dean._  
  
_Yes._  
  
(God did not make obedience. God made Free Will. You are new. You are starting over. You are the First. Humans need names, He said, and slapped inside of you your Sword. You are nine and learn of Cain and Able. He flicks the story from your resentment. Cain. A fresh start. God made Free Will and not obedience. You will not fall, child.)  
  
(and yet)  
  
(and yet brothers)  
  
_What do I do with him?_  
  
_Remind him._  
  
You do not need to ask what. You know. You've always known. And so it is written, and so it goes.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
Dean is sitting on a bed. There is a bottle of whiskey. It is not half empty or half full. It is not a metaphor for the way he sees the world. It is a crutch and a habit and a memory and a comfort and a gift and a destruction.  
  
He startles, drops it. There is not enough to spill out, and he was leaning over his knees, face gently clasped in his free hand, so the bottle did not fall far. It is cheap, in both taste and expense. You don't like whiskey. When you were twenty you spent a night puking into your roommate's trash bin. He jumps to his feet and has his gun out before a human could blink five times.  
  
He does not recognize you immediately. It is your first time visiting him.  
  
(You weren't ever twenty in this timeline. Just some of the other ones.)  
  
He looks confused. He is drunk. He is often drunk.  
  
(This too, is true, in more than one of his lives.)  
  
"Claire?" he asks.  
  
_Jimmy leans against Amelia's belly, makes faces into her stomach. He is talking to her intestine, specifically the jejunum. The uterus is below and filled with a fetus that does not have the capacity to hear yet. In one life Claire was gut shot by a faithful man in that exact spot, because he thought she was the daughter of God. "How about Elizabeth," he suggests, but Amelia has a cousin by that name._  
  
"Yeah," she says. Only God calls her Cainel. God made her. She stands in God's presence. God gave her Free Will.  
  
(Claire already had it. You are Claire. You hate God.)  
  
Cainel looks at Dean and he has the words of God on his ribs and the touch of Him in his mind and the memory of Him in his heart. Dean misses Cas and hates God. You do not kill him for the blasphemy.   
  
(it's tricky)  
  
"What the fuck? What did Cas do to you?"  
  
God gives miracles and reigns despair. God removed His enemies. God created the beginning of his Flock, though you are One and All.  
  
"You need to learn your place, Dean Winchester. And if you won't learn it on your own, I'll teach you."  
  
You tap him, watch his shoulder break. He chokes, and cries out in pain.  
  
"Cas-" he starts to say.  
  
Castiel is not God. You can hate Castiel.  
  
Before the next word comes, you are gone.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
It is a very confusing time. Except you are Cainel and are not confused. Even Claire is starting to understand.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
(it's tricky)  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
You watch through a layer of the Host as your father begs to be taken in your place. Years later your mother re-makes the salt lines, whispers _Christo_ to herself. You have a grave. The body below rots. Vessels, God knew, almost ended the world.  
  
Claire is the tiniest speck inside of you.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
"Have you figured out how to kill God yet?" you ask Dean Winchester.  
  
"Not yet," he says, voice grim. He keeps digging to the bones. His shoulder is healed. This is the ninth time he has seen you. You don't tell him he never will.  
  
"Work faster," you suggest, and with less than a thought you are inside a valley that does not exist yet.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
Amelia lays her head on her kitchen table and weeps. She misses her daughter.  
  
You miss her too.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
_Yes_ , Jimmy says. You haven't figured out how to stop him yet. At least not the time it matters.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
_You are to be protected_ , God declares. _It is a promise, and we always keep our promises_.  
  
_You are not to be used by others._  
  
_You are mine._  
  
_You will not betray._  
  
_Cainel_ , God names, and gives you the power of an archangel. _These are your commandments, and these are to be followed_.  
  
You remember the brightness of the Lightbringer. You remember how Angels Fall. The black wings that covered the Host. The Angels that were cradled into Hell.  
  
The First Battle.  
  
(You remember an angel who believed in an absent father and an angel broken by his silence and an angel who found a new belief system and an angel's doubts and an angel's faults and an angel's cracks inside the flesh of you.)  
  
_This is my Word to you_ , God claims. _And this I ask in return._  
  
And so it is, and so it goes.  
  
Amen.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
There's a story you do not know. It is programmed inside of you. God does not see it. It's a secret. At the end of God, Death reminds Him of the truth.  
  
You bend to your ear and whisper _please_.  
  
_Please remember._  
  
Even Death will reap Him.  
  
But Death reaps you first, and your whisper gets lost along the way back to the beginning.  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
You stand, seventy-nine yards away in human flesh and too weak eyes, and here you stay, observing a woman you once called mommy.  
  
Humanity leaves a stain, but God doesn't want to hear that.


End file.
